That is a great question. When you first start up your aerator, we recommend to start it up slowly, because your right, at first you will begin to bring up some of the muck and debris, which is a good thing. In order for help further break down these bottom muck and organics, oxygen has to be present.

Bottom line, at the beginning the water quality may become murky depending on how much muck is on the bottom, but it really won’t take long after for those debris to settle and for you to be on the way to a more healthier pond.

Hope this helps answer your question. Thanks for the comment!

Raking around the pond’s edge with a Pond & Beach Rake is a great way to remove a lot of excess bottom muck, weeds and algae relatively quickly.

Adding PondClear Natural Bacteria is a great way to break down suspended organics within the water column. This will help clear up your pond.

Adding Nature’s Blue Pond Dye with add an aesthetic blue shade to your pond and help combat any ugly looking water.

Adding an Airmax Aeration System has always been one of the best ways to keep your pond in tip-top shape all year long.

I would start with raking the pond first and then proceed to the next steps that I talked about above. This should help you get off to a great start quickly.

Hope that helps!

We have a one-acre shallow pond approx 8-10 ft deep at the deepest. It is fed by rain and runoff and therefore does not circulate very well. There are no fish, but we get frogs, crayfish, etc. What is our best option to get the pond clean, warm and swimmable as quickly as possible – our summer is very short!

Thank you!

Do you have an aeration system? Also, how deep is your pond? What is the length and width of the pond? I definitely want to help you out so let me know as soon as you can.

Thanks.

You are still in a good position because your pond is still young compared to most. Being proactive like you are will make things easier at your pond enters its second stage of life (after 5 years). As long as you are doing the 4-steps, you should be fine. Over the next year or so, you may see some additional algae blooms develop but just spot treat with an algaecide and you should be all set.

There are two factors you have to consider when adding an aerator to your pond: Circulation & Aeration.

Circulation: Circulation is ensuring that the whole body of water is continuously moving and allows the temperature throughout the pond to be relatively the same (eliminating the therocline). The aerator must be continuously running 24 hours/day in order for this to happen. Usually this can be take up to 72 hours of continuous aeration before the whole body of water is circulating.

Aeration: The windmill is adding some aeration, but if it is not continuous, it unfortunately is not being saturated throughout the entire pond. Windmills are great if there are no other options available because they are definitely better than nothing at all, but an electric aeration system is still way more efficient at pumping that air into the water as well as circulating it.

Remember that an electric aeration system can sit as far as 1,000 from the pond’s edge. That’s almost 1/5 mile away!

Testing for Oxygen: You can test for oxygen, using an oxygen test kit. It is very important to test different spots throughout the body of water. In a large body of water such as yours, the oxygen readings will differ in the different spots. In your case, since the windmill aerator is not continuously running, the oxygen levels towards the bottom of your pond are much lower than those at the surface.

Let me know if you need anything else!

Many customers that have a 140 gallon water garden will shut it down throughout the winter time. Usually by draining and cleaning the pond, bringing the fish indoors into a tank, and removing the pump for storage. Peggy, do you plan to run your system throughout the winter time? Do you have fish now?